La scoperta del cadavere di Oloferne

This is a small panel, only about a foot across, made around 1470 when Botticelli was in his mid-twenties and newly out on his own in Florence. It pairs with a second little panel of Judith walking calmly home. Here he paints the moment after the deed. The soldiers of Holofernes crowd into their general's tent and find him sprawled on the bloodied bed with his head gone, taken in the night by the widow Judith to save her besieged town. Botticelli skips the violence itself and gives you the discovery, the shock passing through the men. He was still years away from the Primavera and the Sistine walls, working here at the scale of a private treasure.